A gas insulated switchgear (GIS), which is one of the most important apparatuses of an electrical power system, functions to ensure safe operation of the electrical power system and control circuits of the electrical power system, thus an operation state of the GIS may have an impact on the security of the entire electrical power system.
Due to the complicated structure of the GIS, unpredictable mechanical or electrical failures during a long-term operation of the GIS often result in indicated open/close states of switchgears contacts deviating from actual open/close states of the switchgears contacts, or the switchgears contacts being closed or opened incompletely. Since the contacts are encapsulated inside the GIS, actual positions of the contacts can not be obtained directly, which may result in failures in the safe operation of the GIS.
In order to monitor directly the open/close states of the switchgears and to avoid failures in the operation of the GIS, video monitoring on the GIS appears as a straightforward and effective approach to achieve this.